For New York Magazine Jerry Saltz writes: "The good news is that, since almost no one will be selling art, artists—especially emerging ones—won't have to think about turning out a consistent style or creating a brand. They'll be able to experiment as much as they want."
This is as close to conventional wisdom as you're likely to find in the art world about how financial crises affect artists and institutions, but at best it is intuited knowledge and either not provable or untrue. For weeks now this notion has bubbled up in writing and conversation with artists, curators, and journalists. Though Saltz writes that "hardship and poverty aren't virtues," the myth that art improves when it isn't selling registers a traditional anti-capitalist note.
When this disappears:
"Major support for this exhibition was provided by Peter Norton and the Peter Norton Family Foundation. Additional support was provided by Tim Nye and the MAT Charitable Foundation. Significant funding was provided by the National Committee of the Whitney Museum of American Art."
then this disappears:
Tim Hawkinson, Überorgan, 2000.
How is that good for art?
Today comes the news in the Financial Times that Intrade is opening a predictions market in contemporary art. No doubt, investors have been clamoring, Where is a safe place to invest in the midst of this global financial calamity? Well let me introduce you to contemporary art futures, my friend! For too long has the commoditization of art been slowed and strangled by obsolete notions of objecthood. Your entrée into the contemporary art world has been for too long governed by those gatekeepers of the élite: museums, galleries, critics, even art itself. No longer!
Late capitalism sure is cooky.
The picture above is from a different (and altogether more encouraging) story in Der Spiegel about the financial crisis. The U.S. Treasury is considering a move to buy ownership stakes in banks in order to bolster capital markets, something that smart observers like Matthew Yglesias have advocated since the introduction of the first bailout plan. Bank ownership is the basis of the British rescue plan, and if that's something that the U.S. adopts, that's good news.
But that picture—rather appropriate for a new art market, don't you think?
UPDATE: Bonus markets-related art!
Wang Guangyi, Great Criticism Series: NASDAQ, 2005.
Ambinder's got some plausible context for McCain's demeaning, seemingly out-of-nowhere "that one" jab at Obama last night:
McCain uses "that one" frequently in his stump speeches; the set-up is usually clearer, as McCain refers to Obama's being one of the senators who supported it, not McCain -- as in, if you had to guess who supported the Bush-Cheney '05 energy bill, it's that senator, not this senator. But it came off awkwardly on stage tonight.Reading that, I think I do remember hearing McCain use that parallel in a setpiece speech. And it wasn't even McCain's most awkward line of the evening. When asked whom he'd appoint as U.S. Treasury secretary, McCain sneered "Not you" at Tom Brokaw as if he were saying "Screw you."
But let's not overthink this! There's plenty of room for McCain to be both awkward and contemptible in the way he talks to and about his opponents. (And wife.) I know that if I were sitting down on a public stage and my colleague and rival were standing above me with a mic, condescending to me as an object, I might recognize this as a badly delivered line, but I would still want to kick him in the thorax. Beutler: "Somebody needs to mention that this is a singular rendering of the phrase 'Those people!'"
I asked Spencer what he thought about this speculative AP story regarding the oil war in Nigeria and whether it should serve as a harbinger of new violence in Iraq now that the government is doling out enormous oil contracts. Short answer: Go read Spencer.
While I've got this window open: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's world page is actually a handy source for AP headlines, often picking up interesting stories that other newspapers pass over. Now, doesn't it feel very 2004 to read a tip about a way to read the Internet that a blogger finds personally useful?
Ezra and Yglesias take exception to the "Main Street" metonym that's made its way through the media and campaigns. Of course, it should come as no surprise that high-profile Washington pundits from California and New York respectively should reject even the synecdoche of small-town America. On this, they are correct: Most Americans do not live in small towns. Nevertheless, most of America's geography is dotted by them, and all of those small towns have Main Streets—and all of those Main Streets need badly to be transformed, not into urban corridors but livable communities where citizens can prosper reasonably, contributing to states who contribute to the wealth of the nation rather than withdraw from it. And who is ready to talk about how? Not John McCain but Barack Obama, who is ready to have the debate about how to make that change, a debate that John McCain wants to avoid, and so on, and so on.
Rather than lend credence to an imagined bucolic America that exists only in Norman Rockwell's watercolors, this metaphor draws attention to the significant problems posed by sub/exurbanization, increased income disparity, and the displacement of small and local businesses by massive corporations and international firms. At least, there's an opportunity to redirect "Main Street" toward that discussion. What does John McCain mean by Main Street?, asks Barack Obama. It's not where you and I live.
It's also just not feasible to ignore all the Main Streets despite the fact that not many people live along them, because our government structure assigns disproportionate power to those states wherein Main Streets lay. Hence Barack Obama is chasing an EC vote in Nebraska, where one hopes he's able to sing a Main Street carol convincingly.
Beyond the fact that almost everyone will read "Main Street" with the most immediate, cliché meaning in mind, the bigger problem with the metaphor is in its application: Wall Street versus Main Street. I suspect that this negative construction is not a useful way to think about financial regulation in broad terms but clearly, but I can't say.
